


Sashimi

by gutrots



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (kind of? depends on the perspective), (or more like an approximation thereof for kink meme purposes), Body Worship, Cannibalism, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Dehumanization, Gen, Gore, HYDRA Trash Party, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Japanese Culture, Kintsugi, M/M, MCU trash meme, Nantaimori, Not Beta Read, Objectification, Sushi, Touch-Starved, Yakuza, body sushi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 03:02:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15379266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gutrots/pseuds/gutrots
Summary: The Winter Soldier has a lovely time at a sushi dinner.





	Sashimi

The first few seconds out of the ice are the worst. When blood starts pumping through the asset’s veins again, lungs decompressing and neural connections rekindling their sparks, everything both blurry and vivid, too fuzzy and too sharp. Pupils struggling to adjust to the artificial light. Optic nerves unable to send legible signals to the brain. The asset stumbles, drawing in sharp breaths, its heart speeding into overdrive where it's trying to compensate for weeks of stillness. A strong arm on its bicep steadies it in place, grounds it in reality before it hurts itself in its confusion. Slowly, it comes back to life, its breathing pattern stabilizing and only the faintest tremors still manifesting through an occasional shiver. The sharp, stabbing pain of the cold thrums underneath its skin, unrelenting, and it will take a substantial amount of time for the asset to fully return to room temperature.

Steady hands guide the asset through a standard set of procedures. The touch is brief, clinical. It is not cruel, and for that the asset is grateful. Every single sensation anchors it in the present, prepares it for the next step of the evaluation. Guides it to through the frosty haze clouding its damaged brain.

Fingers at the throat, to measure the pulse. Fingers inside mouth, to check for bad teeth. Fingers on fingers, to look for signs of frostbite. Unpleasant as it is, the lingering cold is familiar, comforting.

The only comfort the asset is allowed to take these days is the certainty of order. Order through pain, and absence thereof. Punishment into pain into knowing. Time as a flat circle, falling asleep, waking up, killing. Hands on its skin, there to navigate the world beyond the security of cryogenic sleep. To show it right from wrong.

This perfect order is shattered in a minute flat, when a different set of hands guides the asset outside the room where it woke up.

 

* * *

 

As soon as the asset takes its first unsure step outside the door it realises that it is not in any HYDRA facility that it had been to before. It has happened a few times, being transported between bases while it had been sleeping. But this is different, and not even the bony fingers digging into the meat of its forearm are enough to distract the asset from its strange surroundings, from the smells and sounds coming from above the narrow hallway it is being walked through. Smells and sounds that are nothing like what the asset is used to.

The asset’s home is in half-darkness, amidst the buzz of flickering fluorescent light bulbs and stale air miles underground. In a silence just as deadly as the asset itself, punctured with an occasional echo of screams of an interrogation gone perfectly right. Shrouded in the sweat of sparring rings and gunpowder smoke of firing ranges, alongside the _tap tap tap_ of steel-capped boots on bare floors. In rooms of concrete and steel, where it can move from shadow to shadow like a feral animal in the night, answering to one call only.

Not here, where the sounds of laughter and clinking glasses ring loud and clear through the wooden floorboards covering the hallway from above. Bubbling water and quick knives, somehow cheerful rather than cruel. Where a soft yellow light cascades into the darkness below, softening its edges. Where the air is hot with steam and dense with a million smells which make the asset remember things that must have happened aeons ago -

(three soviet soldiers, warming their fingers over a steaming pot of pink-red soup. an elderly woman rolling dough between her wrinkled hands. kind words of praise. someone showing the asset how to hold a fork. sitting at the table, rather than underneath it. like a person. this must have happened a very long time ago indeed.)

\- the asset is pulled back to the present when its handler stops it in its tracks with a sharp tug on its flesh hand. It stops immediately, letting the handler turn it to the side with a firm push on its lower back, so that it is standing in front of a heavy metal door, which creaks quietly when it is opened from the other side. The handler leads the asset into the room, and the instant bite of cold has it wondering if its awakening was a dream, if it is still sleeping its frozen sleep.

 

* * *

 

Just as it was starting to feel warmth seep underneath its skin during the walk down the hallway, the asset feels itself freezing again, turning pale where a faint blush had begun creeping its way up its cheekbones. Tiny particles of ice appear in its damp hair and along the hemline of the loose gown it wears for medical examinations. On its eyebrows and eyelashes, and whatever body hair has managed to grow back since its last maintenance. There is a strange sound in the room, and upon closer inspection the asset determines that it is coming from its own mouth. Ashamed, it tries to control the tremors in its jaw in order to stop its top and bottom teeth from clicking against each other. Its handler tightens his grip, steady hands guiding the asset onwards through this strange landscape.

The room is all ice and steel, sharp hooks glinting in the low, blue light. Dismembered animals hang from the ceiling, legs and heads and torsos taken out of context of the body. Not wounded or bleeding, just frozen still in time. Metal shelving lines the walls, stacked tall with Styrofoam boxes overflowing with fish and shells, tiny animals the asset does not know the names of, their glassy eyes reflecting the ice they sleep on. The cold brings out the iridescent shine in their scales, the sharpness of claws and softness of fins. Makes them seem so alive and so _not_ , all at once. For all the blood on its hands, and how indifferent it remains to the damage done, the lifeless creatures preserved in the ice make the asset feel strangely unsettled.

A man emerges from amongst this strange diorama of the natural world. In this microcosm made completely still, nature reduced to its mere components, he seems strangely ill-fitting. The man is old, much older than everyone the asset has worked with before. He has a navy blue apron wrapped around his waist and a hat perched slightly askew amongst his greying hair. His cheeks are flushed and a slight sheen of sweat still lingers on his forehead, like he just arrived from the loud, humid heat upstairs.

The man and the asset's handler exchange a curt bow.

'Sorry it's got freezer burn' the handler apologises with a sheepish smile.

 

* * *

 

The asset is led out of the cold, upstairs into a bustling kitchen, its handler’s fingers tight around its wrist, like he is scared the asset might run off like a spooked animal, afraid of the noise and light and movement around it. Like he is keeping the asset safe, the bruising touch a familiar comfort in this alien world. They walk down a maze of corridors lined with paper walls and hardwood flooring, and eventually through sliding doors leading into a sparsely decorated room with dim lights and a sterile smell permeating the air.

Muted yellow light glows softly from between the wooden beams of the ceiling, casting soft shadows where it doesn't quite reach the corners of the room, bathing the scene in a warm glow. The room is furnished sparsely, the only objects present being a large, metal table and a few cushions placed directly on the bamboo floor mats. A faint echo of the hustle and bustle of the rest of the building can be heard through the thin walls, and the asset feels uneasy. Unused to this kind of setting, simple yet somehow too elegant for anything it might be ordered to do, pain and pleasure alike.

Although it is not allowed to keep secrets, the asset withholds a certain fact from its handler.

The asset is scared.

There's comfort in predictability and order through punishment. Safety in routines, in action and consequence. In repetition, in the same words over and over again, same hands touching with identical intent. This however, this new setting and the multitude of sensations it carries, is strange and unusual and disconcerting. But as long as there are hands to guide it through this new set of circumstances, the asset will trust its handlers to show it the way.

Hands brush on the asset’s thighs where they pull its gown up and off. Hands grasp it by the arm and lead it to the table. Push on its chest to make it sit down, and then lay with its face up towards the ceiling. This feels familiar too, although the room seems too impractical for surgery and the walls too thin for receiving punishment.

The handler leans over the asset, and instructs it in heavily accented Russian.

'Mission protocol: stay still, and not a single word. Not until I say you're done. Lift a finger or make a sound, and there will be consequences. Understood?'

'Permission to breathe?' the asset asks, unsure how the rhythmic rise and fall of its chest factors into this unusual set of orders.

'Granted. Now quiet, and be good.' the handler answers, and although the mission is a strange one, the asset will obey.

 

* * *

 

A different set of hands now guides the asset's body and the touch is alien in its gentleness. The hands are wrinkled, littered with a cacophony of red-brown stains and blue veins, and yet they remain graceful. Nimble. Perfectly precise yet oddly harmless as they arrange the asset into position.

As per its handler’s instructions, the asset does not move. The hands move it instead, guiding its head slightly to the side and its chin lower, reducing the strain in its neck. Adjusting the angle of its hips. Fingers more closely together, legs a touch wider apart. The hands arrange the asset’s hair so that it fans out around its head.

The asset can only see as far as the range of movement of its eyeballs will allow, and a sudden sense of dread overcomes it when those precise fingers leave its skin and it loses the man from sight. There is a noise of a wooden door sliding, numerous small objects being shuffled about, and the man is back as soon as he left. He is holding a small brush dipped in red in one hand, and he uses the other to close the asset's eyes. Just like the asset has seen people do to dead bodies.

If this is death, it feels blissful. But the hands on its face remind the asset of its orders. It is not allowed to die.

The asset lies still as the brush makes its way across its eyes, the bristles smooth and wet. The touch is quick, and soon the asset's eyelids are being pulled upwards again. Another brush is fluttering over its body, this time covered in gold. It traces along the mess of scar tissue radiating across the asset's left shoulder. Steady motion follows each line of raised flesh, the sensation soft and firm all at once. There is infinite patience in the process, endless precision and simple grace. The asset does not understand why such effort is being dedicated to this ugly, ruined part of it, but the smooth gliding motion of the brush along damaged skin soothes these worrisome thoughts.

Despite the cold surface of the table making it feel like it is being returned into cryogenic sleep without the necessary sedation, the asset basks in this strange touch. Like is the biggest luxury it has been allowed in decades. The though feels obscene, the asset not made for such beautiful things. For the foreign softness underlying the military precision of these old, wrinkled hands. It is wrong, to luxuriate in the sensations when it is carrying out a mission, bizarre as this one is. To indulge. To keep secrets. And yet here it is.

The sudden onslaught of contradicting feelings makes the asset want to weep, unequipped as it is to handle such lofty things as emotion.

The asset has no memory of ever being touched gently. It is fond of its handlers' touch, the firm guidance and the steady comfort it provides. It does not mind the touch of doctors and nurses, their clinical efficiency communicating the desire to improve with the way their hands can read deep underneath the asset's flesh.

The touch of the calloused hands of STRIKE team when they make use of the asset post-mission is a strange one. Because for all it hurts, it makes the asset feel wanted. Like no one will leave it in a cell to rot and starve again, like it had happened back when it was still nothing but a rabid dog, biting and snarling at the briefest brush of skin against skin. Its pain brings someone else pleasure, and for that it is grateful. The touch, punishing as it feels, lets the asset know that it is good.

Finally, the brushes are put away and the asset yearns for the gentle hands to return to its skin. They do, placing leaves and flowers over its body, and the asset is reminded of the time it killed a man in a temple, near an altar full of ripe fruit and white blossoms just like the ones making their way into its hair. It realises that it can name two hundred different types of weapons, twenty key figures of Soviet espionage involved in the Cold War, and all the arteries and muscles of the human body, but it does not know a single name for a flower.

Why would it. The asset is not made to be gentle, or to appreciate beauty. And yet here it is. Basking in the sensation of being adorned like an animal meant for ritual slaughter. A beautiful sacrifice burdened with a higher purpose. Rhythmic motion of fingers mirroring the words looping inside its brain, reassuring the asset that this is not a transgression. That as long as it manages to keep a secret, no real harm will be done. The asset cannot help but enjoy the process, letting the pleasure hum gently through its burnt nerves and rough skin, unbothered by how wrong all this should be.

As soon as the hands are done placing flowers in the asset's hair, someone enters the room. The asset doesn’t look, it is not allowed to, but it hears things being placed on the floor, an assortment of small _somethings_. Maybe they are tools of punishment. Maybe the asset has been found out, letting itself indulge. It knows that it is stupid. Misbehaving, sometimes, no better than a mongrel dog baring fangs at those trying to tame it. It needs rules and orders and hands to guide it, and now it has failed. It let itself be tricked by those gentle hands, mistaking their treachery for care. For indulgence. Keeping secrets. How foolish it was, thinking it could hide something from its handlers. Forgetting that the many heads of HYDRA have eyes everywhere, even underneath the asset's skin. Inside its skull.

But the punishment does not come. Instead, there are handfuls of white in the man's hands, being kneaded and formed into small rectangles. There are strips of pink and yellow and orange, fastened with narrow black bands. Ever since the asset had been acquired by the Americans, its sole source of nourishment has been whatever substance is injected into its body through a nasogastric tube. However, it knows what food is. Remembers it from its time with the Soviets, when everything was so very different. When it was still allowed to pretend like it's a person sometimes.

(steam and a sweet smell rising from an enamel pot on a gas burner. a bunker, a basement, soldiers huddled together. eat, _soldatik_ , you must be tired. meat and rice wrapped in cabbage leaves, hot and hearty. солдатик. товарищ. друг)

The hands produce all sort of shapes and sizes of this strange type of food, so unlike the simple fare the asset remembers from its past. Each one is shaped to perfection, a frivolous little gem that simple things like the asset could never appreciate properly. That does not matter though. What matters is the tenderness with which the hands place every single piece on the asset's body. It cannot feel the chill from the table anymore, so absorbed in the sensation of fingers barely brushing flesh where they place the paper thin slices of vivid orange and pale pink on its outstretched arms.

Rectangular pieces down the torso, round ones on the stomach. The asset cannot see the ones placed on its legs, but it imagines them to be just as perfect. A strange sensation, slightly wet and sticky where the rice touches skin, but pleasant. Too much comfort to allow any confusion, to let a fear of a dreadful end to these delights ruin everything. The asset lets itself enjoy the contrast between the ice cold underneath its back and the warm humidity over the front, basking in the attention.

Slivers of yellow and dots of green sprinkled all over. A rain of pink petals to finish it all off.

 

* * *

 

The man leans over the asset, tracking the complex topography laid out on its bare flesh once, twice and hurries out of the room with a soft patter of steps on the bamboo mats and a slide of a paper screen. The asset still feels the ghost of his touch upon its skin, and it cannot find it in itself to fear what may come next.

Out of the corner of its eye it can see four men enter the room. They look unfamiliar, dressed in sharp, black suits, green and red and blue of intricate tattoos barely visible underneath the cuffs of their sleeves. They take their seats on one side of the table, paying the asset no mind. One of the men lights a cigarette, and the asset can feel the smoke burning its nostrils, but it does not utter a word.

Soon after, another group of four enters. The asset cannot make out their faces as they approach, but when they bow curtly to the ones already sat at the table, it spots a familiar silver glint in their lapels, a universal symbol for home. For comfort. Although its handler is not here, the asset relaxes, safe in the knowledge that HYDRA is here again, here to guide it with its many hands.

A conversation starts in a language the asset is unfamiliar with, and soon small ceramic cups are clinking above its body, stray droplets of liquid splashing on its chest. A hand reaches out and grabs a piece of food off the asset's nude flesh. The asset is expecting a caress to follow, or a pinch or a flick of knife, but there is nothing. A disconcerting emptiness, the most brutal of silences.

The asset's body is not its own to control. Hands mould and shape it, showing it right from wrong. They bend it to their will, and it follows, born from punishment into order. When it is nude, there are always hands on it somehow. Poking and prodding, examining, learning the truth of its insides. Pulling and scraping, punishing, striving for perfection, showing how to be good. Painful or not, they guide the asset, showing it its purpose.

The absence of touch is mortifying.

The meal goes on and on, alcohol flowing freely and conversation growing louder. The asset can see that the men are flushed when they lean over to pick up pieces from its sternum, to dip them in dots of green scattered across its collarbone. Their suit jackets are off and sleeves rolled up, birds, fish and beasts swirling over their arms. Alive and _not,_ just like the animals in the cold. Scattering up towards the shoulders, away from wrists and fingers. Never touching the asset’s skin. No matter the booming laughter and sweaty foreheads, the hands never slip.

To be left without any guidance through such a strange scenario is the worst punishment of all. There is the basic set of instructions, of course, but the circumstances are nothing but bizarre. The asset's reality does not match up with what it would expect from the current situation, like its own traitorous brain is sabotaging itself with bad intel. It needs guidance so very badly.

But the comfort never comes. In their drunken haze, both sets of diners are strangely careful in a way that feels natural rather than forced. Hands fly over the asset’s body, picking and choosing, pieces of white topped with pink and red and orange, rolled in black. The men lean over and smile towards the opposite side of the table, redness creeping high up on their cheekbones, ties loosened and shirts unbuttoned at the collar. Never once meeting the asset's unmoving gaze. Never brushing their fingers over its exposed skin, adorned for their enjoyment. Like the asset is nothing but another piece of furniture in this sparsely decorated room, its presence obvious and unworthy of attention.

The asset is used to making itself invisible. However, it is not used to feeling invisible when placed nude in front of an audience. If anything, it is used to drawing attention, attracting gaze and words and touch. It remembers Director Pierce showing it off to his international guests. Commander Rumlow introducing it to new members of STRIKE, showing them the many uses of the asset. Doctors and engineers, military officers and billionaire investors. All of them touching, sending clear signals about which parts of the asset’s body interest them the most.

The current situation is confusing. Shameful. The asset tries to tone out these feelings inside it, knowing that it is not allowed to feel any of them. That it is being disobedient, and HYDRA knows. It sees all, and it always knows. But there is so much that has not been explained, and the asset is not smart, and it needs its handlers to assign words and touches to this confusing reality. To map out and navigate the things that people do, because the way the asset grasps them, vivid flashes of sensation and words repeating over and over in its useless brain, that will not do.

Why will they not touch it, when it is trying so hard to be good? Has it done something wrong? Will the punishment come, or is this already it? Certainly feels that way.

The though is enough to make the asset's left ankle twitch slightly, sending a rectangular piece tumbling gracelessly to the steel table.

The asset is terrified.

 

* * *

 

The remainder of the dinner passes oddly amicably despite the asset's disobedience. No one bothers to even acknowledge the mistake, much less do anything to punish the asset for such crass behaviour.

The anticipation has the asset on edge. It had learned a long time ago that no misgiving goes unpunished. That failure shall be rewarded in kind, sooner or later. It knows not to resist, to welcome the punishing hands, to let them correct it. To show it right from wrong, to help it get better. The pain is worth the touch, the reassurance and comfort it brings.

At the end of the meal, when no food remains on the asset's nude body and the cheerful ambience of the night is settling down, sated and tired, the man with withered, gentle hands returns to the room.

For a fleeting moment, the asset is overjoyed to catch a brief glance of silvery hair and navy blue apron hovering above its still form. Maybe the man will clean it, use his gentle hands to pluck the flowers from the asset's hair, to wash the red ink off its eyelids. To remedy the harrowing absence the asset was forced to endure, to remind it that there is still someone to guide it. To prepare it for further use, pass it into many waiting hands, let it show the diners just how _good_ it can be. Make them forgive its clumsy, thoughtless mistake.

Instead, there's a sharp glint of a knife, entirely too bright in the dim light of the room. And a vivid, piercing pain in the asset's skin, where the blade has made its way underneath layers of dermis and is cutting away paper thin slices, so similar to the ones the asset had seen placed on its outstretched arms. Pink and orange and red.

The knife cuts in a circle, then six lines curled at the edges, and something in the middle. Something the asset cannot make out from the burning trails of pain themselves, but instinctively knows to be a skull. It remains silent, doesn't flinch when rivulets of blood come streaming down its chest and pool down either side of the neck, so similar to the ink it had been adorned with.

Above it, the asset sees the man discard the flayed skin and wipe his knife, the edge perfectly sharp and smooth. The asset doesn't dare close its eyes when the blade returns to slice away at the red tissue underneath skin, lifting translucent slivers and placing them on a ceramic dish. Once again, it is reminded of the disjointed animals it had seen earlier.

After eight paper thin pieces of flesh have been procured, the man takes the ceramic dish in his gentle, wrinkled hands and approaches each diner, serving them a red sliver taken from the asset’s chest. They eat, unbothered by the mess of blood and tissue beneath them, like the asset is nothing but an exotic beast slaughtered for their enjoyment.

Finally, a man reaches out his hand, serpents locked in endless battle in ink on his skin, frozen still, and slides a single finger through the gore leaking down the asset's sternum. The finger traces the symbol etched into the asset’s skin before dipping into the blood which began to pool in its navel, smearing it around in a mess of curves and dashes, a flurry of patterns the asset cannot discern.

The touch is almost gentle.

 

* * *

 

冬ひと日  うれひある身の  花を提ぐ

**Author's Note:**

> Translated to “golden joinery,” Kintsugi (or Kintsukuroi, which means “golden repair”) is the centuries-old Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with a special lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. Beautiful seams of gold glint in the cracks of ceramic ware, giving a unique appearance to the piece. (Source: My Modern Met)
> 
> 冬ひと日 うれひある身の 花を提ぐ - Fuyu hito hi/ Urei aru mi no/ Hana wo sagu
> 
> The winter day,
> 
> One with sorrow
> 
> Carries a flower in the hand.
> 
> A haiku poem by Iida Dakotsu (1885-1962).


End file.
